A Discovery of Witches is part one of a trilogy in progress about the human and non-human worlds of science, faith, and power.  Add a pinch of lust and some evil – lots of wine and Oh, what fun!  

Escapism is always best when it has foundations in reality.  Historical and scientifically-accurate (sort of) reality is especially appealing.  Throw in non-humans descended from human bloodlines, supernatural abilities and a hot french guy and I’m there.  This shocks you, I know. 

Deborah Harkness holds three degrees in history and specifically the history and science of magic in Europe. She has published books and received fellowships from many prestigious foundations (among them, the Guggenheim, National Science and National Humanities Foundations…)  It suffices to say that she knows of what she writes.  To mix fact and fiction with such cleverness is always deserving of kudos.  

I loved A Discovery of Witches.

Diana Bishop is an historian with impeccable credentials; Yale, Oxford and is also the progeny of a long startlingly-gifted and pure line of witches.  She renounces magic after the murder of her parents and fights against her innate abilities at every turn.  She tries, and fails, to squelch the extraordinary under piles of anal compulsive ordinariness.

Matthew Clairmont is an old, old, old geneticist.  And a vampire.  He also crawls the hallowed halls of academia at Oxford.  He is also rich as Croesus and french Nobilty.  Poor dear.

You’ll never guess what happens!  OK, yes you will.  They meet.  They fall in love.  It’s forbidden.  It’s so bloody familiar.  And yet … it’s more interesting because they aren’t love-sick teenagers.  No proms.  No sulking (… not that I didn’t love those books – you know I did).

Add some intelligently-original Darwinian plausibility to all that.  What if survival of the fittest is responsible for species other than human or animal?  Is it really so implausible that nature would create diversity outside of the known family, genus, species arena?

Diana and Matthew are possibly the end and the beginning of their own creatures’ survival.  How clever that one is a scholar of alchemy* and the other a gifted geneticist.  The answers will inevitably lie somewhere between the mind and the heart.

My only problem is waiting for round two.

*Alchemy is foremost the material transformation of chemicals but no less importantly, a discussion of philosophical and metaphysical transformation.

Jennifer Petty Mann grew up in New York City, moved to London, England, then back to Boston, and is now happily ensconced on the EightMile river in Lyme with three little ones.  A former teacher, window dresser for Saks, and designer, she is taking her love of books to the proverbial “street.” 

April 1, 2008, I reviewed the stand out self published book by Brunonia Barry.  I swooned.  Read it, so I don’t have to repeat myself- we all know how anathema THAT is to me. (Boyfriend will hurt self rolling eyes.) 

With very high expectations I read her second book — The Map of True Places.  At first I was not enthralled. I hoped for more and put it down and picked it up a few times.  Luckily I picked it up that last time.  Phew.  Pity the unbeliever.  I literally finished and slammed it closed saying Holy Crap –.  I had to re-read the last chapter to orient myself.

This is what I love about Brunonia Barry.  You  think  you know better (again with the eye rolling) but  you don’t.  As with Muriel Barbery’s Elegance of the Hedgehog (9.4.09) you have to keep checking.  You are close and its in your periphery but you miss it.  I love being put in my place.  I love being wrong.*

Barry keeps you on the verge of figuring it out.  When she tells you can’t believe you missed it.  You are glad you missed it because the mystery is her talent.

Zee Finch is a therapist in Boston with a lovely office overlooking the Charles.  She grew up in Salem and spent an excellent portion of her childhood being a boat-thieving derelict.  Alas, morally she is sound so that ended before it could have made an equally enthralling story.  Her young bipolar mother marries a gay man and kills herself when her daughter is 13.  The father’s love, a wonderful man named Charles, moves in and it is hardly a fait accomplit.

Zee challenges her own demons by addressing those of others and thwarts her own progress.  When a case strikes very close to home and ends without resolution, Zee is forced to confront the obvious and come to terms with herself.  As with the Whitneys in The Lace Reader, the Finches are a fabulous amalgamation of drama and love.  The more you know the less you understand until the denouement, which has dreadful yet cathartic repercussions.

Quel coup de foudre alors!  Loved it.

*There are a veritable plethora of reasons this is not true, but you know what point I’m making. Yes, you do.

Jennifer Petty Mann grew up in New York City, moved to London, England, then back to Boston, and is now happily ensconced on the EightMile river in Lyme with three little ones.  A former teacher, window dresser for Saks, and designer, she is taking her love of books to the proverbial “street.” 

Anna Quindlan is such a good columnist (New York Times, Newsweek) that is constently thrills me that she also such a good and prodigious writer, Black and Blue, being my favorite among her novels…

Every Last One is her newest and … holy you know what.  I walked into the library to fight with their fax machine (I damned mine to the basement for insubordination) and Barbara Carlson hurled the book at me while muttering something akin to OMG.  Being naturally quiet people (not this bunch, but still), any time a librarian thrusts a book at you, you must take it.

Next image is me reading quietly at home while two sick children cough and gag in the background and the other three cough at school.  I sit.  I read.  I want to flip ahead to the part that made Barbara say OMG, but I can not.

Mary Beth Latham is a mom.  A wife.  She and her doctor husband have three children.  All at home.  I read.  They are normal and fairly happy.  Dinner, school, camp, boyfriends, the usual.  Mary Beth has friends and neighbors with varying degrees of involvement in her life.  The past has a few thorns as does, we assume, the future.  This is life after all.

What happens is staggeringly heinous.  Take the magic eight ball.  Shake it and ask a question.  Then, in lieu of an answer, throw it out the car window and watch a tractor trailer drive over it.  Now imagine that was your heart.

Now get up the next day.  And the next.  Repeat until the day you die.  This is the new world for Mary Beth Latham.

It is quite extraordinary how resilient mankind really is.  Things you can not imagine surviving are survivable simply because you have no choice.  You literally CAN NOT imagine them.  Thank God.  You can decide to act a certain way or not to act that way, but it really makes no difference.  You breathe in and out until life moves on.  It is actually merciful to be shocked and numbed because operating at full capacity with full cognizance is totally out of the question anyway. 

I certainly couldn’t have and neither can Mary Beth.  The testament to the power of Anna Quindlan’s novels is her grasp of reality.  She sees and hears and tells you a story that has happened.  It happens all the time.  Thankfully not quite like this, but horrifyingly often nevertheless.

It is a gift to feel another’s pain.  Empathy is far more useful than sympathy.  If you can for one moment be in Mary Beth’s shoes, you are a stronger, more understanding person.  If for one minute of one conversation when you meet or know someone who has been in staggering circumstances, you can choose the better thing to say — the more empathetic thing to say — then it is a gift for you both.

Jennifer Petty Mann grew up in New York City, moved to London, England, then back to Boston, and is now happily ensconced on the EightMile river in Lyme with three little ones.  A former teacher, window dresser for Saks, and designer, she is taking her love of books to the proverbial “street.” 

I know I should be reviewing something smarter, or more current, or hipper, but I can’t help myself.  I am reading everything I am supposed to — Cleopatra, Unbroken, some book about Voltaire’s mistress.  This book really got to me though, so I just can’t help but do this.

I went to the Book Barn (akin to Harry Winston in my opinion for sheer delight and fabulousness) and came back with yet another coal bag full of books.  Everything Marian Keyes has written was among them.  

There are five Irish sisters and there is a book about each.  Love, divorce, family trials, etc. … the Walsh Family is a riot.

What I am compelled to say about Anybody Out There is that the mix of humor and pain is notable.  How on earth, I thought, can this really be at all amusing when what I think has happened has happened?

Anna Walsh has a really cool, make-up PR job in the City.  She has moved to the States with her best friend Jacqui and her sister Rachel (Rachel’s Holiday) is also there with her fiancé Luke. The gang of their friends is a riot.  The “real men” absolutely will crack you up.  Anna is young and spunky and clever, and falls in love with her dream man.  Aiden is her life.

We meet Anna at her parents house in Dublin recovering from horrifying injuries that she has little recollection of getting.  What is going on?  You figure it before Keyes tells you and it makes you feel sick.

It’s just awful.  Interestingly, you don’t really see the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel until Anna does.  It goes neither too slow nor too fast, and even though this is essentially a chick-lit beach book, it surprises you with its insight.  Keyes very deftly maneuvers through real pain with real humor.  I was compelled to comment … and so I have.

Jennifer Petty Mann grew up in New York City, moved to London, England, then back to Boston, and is now happily ensconced on the EightMile river in Lyme with three little ones.  A former teacher, window dresser for Saks, and designer, she is taking her love of books to the proverbial “street.” 

Ah, the fates have intervened again and a long misplaced email has called a book to my attention. Ann Blair Kloman wrote a wonderful suspense novel last year (… longer? Who knows?  I age without consent) and has now written another.

And to think I almost missed it.  Isobel’s Odyssey is a treat.  Wonderfully reminiscent of my beloved Mrs Polifax series (Dorothy Gilman), Isobel Van Dursan has broadened her horizons.

A sweet widow (do not believe this) from the picturesque coast of Maine, she decides travel and piles of caviar-type accommodations whilst doing so is her new future.  Why should she suffer in coach when the Admiral’s Club has such great chairs and champagne?  She is equally resolute in her inability to suffer fools.  Some less than others.

Certain people really have it coming and, if the two propensities can work together? … ahhh.  Isobel’s niece Chloe married a particularly obstreperous individual with whom Isobel has taken great umbrage.  What to do?  How about a small electrical problem?

Indeed.  Well, he asked for it.  Who else is behaving poorly and asking for it?  Quite a number of disreputable characters apparently.  And if something were to happen, who would suspect a sweet American widow?

See where this is going?  Just wonderful.  The unlikeliest of scenarios when written with humor and zest is going to be a fun book.

Ann has nailed it again.

Jennifer Petty Mann grew up in New York City, moved to London, England, then back to Boston, and is now happily ensconced on the EightMile river in Lyme with three little ones.  A former teacher, window dresser for Saks, and designer, she is taking her love of books to the proverbial “street.”